Time & Perspective Quote by Ikue Mori

Improvisation, for Ikue Mori, isn’t a free-for-all; it’s a physics problem with feelings. “Improvising things is always changing” rejects the comforting myth that spontaneous music is about expressing a stable inner self. Instead, it’s about staying alert inside a system that won’t hold still: the room, the gear, the other players, the audience’s attention, even the performer’s own nerves. Change isn’t a side effect. It’s the condition.

Then she lands on the phrase that gives the line its bite: “A lot of momentum.” Momentum implies carryover, consequence, the way one choice shoves the next one into existence. In Mori’s world - shaped by her jump from No Wave drumming in late-70s New York to pioneering laptop and electronic improvisation - improvising isn’t just reacting. It’s steering something already in motion, where the past few seconds become a force you have to negotiate. That’s a quietly radical idea for electronic music, a domain often associated with control, presets, and repeatability. She reframes it as an embodied practice: even machines have inertia once you start playing them.

The subtext is discipline. “Always changing” sounds like permission; “momentum” is the warning label. Improvisation demands commitment to instability while accepting that every gesture leaves a wake. Mori’s phrasing is plain, almost tossed off, which suits the ethic: the real sophistication is in the listening, not the rhetoric.